Chinese Donuts

Just 3 ingredients is all you need to make these easy Copycat Chinese Donuts. Puffy, golden, and covered in sugar, they taste just like the ones you get at your favorite Asian buffet!

Sugar coated biscuit donuts in a bowl

Sugared Chinese donuts in a bowl

Sometimes in life, it doesn’t pay to take shortcuts. One of those times? Home repair time. Our home is over 100 years old, and in the last century, it has endured more than a few shortcuts. There is duct tape and glue in places it never should have been. And let’s not even discuss the deck situation, which has led to crumbling stairs and possums (yes, POSSUMS!) sneaking into our house (yes, INTO OUR HOUSE).

Home repairs are no place to take shortcuts. Donuts on the other hand? Totally appropriate.

a bowl of sugar dusted Chinese Donuts

Chinese Donuts Make Easy Treats

These Asian Buffet Style Donuts are ridiculously easy to make. I’d be embarrassed to share the recipe with you if it weren’t so darn good. All you need is 3 simple ingredients!

Ingredients For Chinese Donuts

  1. Some oil for frying
  2. A can of refrigerated biscuit dough
  3. Sugar

Who knew biscuit dough made amazing Chinese donuts, and why has it taken me 28 years to discover this?

How To Make Chinese Donuts

Seriously, all you do is drop little balls of dough into the hot oil, fry until golden, then roll these beauties in sugar.

The resulting donut holes taste just like the donuts you find at Asian buffets, except better because you can eat them while they’re fresh and piping hot rather than after several hours of languishing under heat lamps next to various sauced meats.

I’ll be honest, I am quite generous with the sugar on these. When I was a kid I may or may not have secretly poured extra sugar from a sugar packet on top of the Chinese donuts at the buffet. #noshame. When I’m at home, I just make sure to get a nice thick coat on them.

a hand takes a single donut from a bowl of Chinese Donuts

These are so fun and easy to make, and they’re a great recipe for the kids to help with (maybe stick them at the rolling station and NOT the flaming hot oil frying station). They’re also incredibly versatile. I stuffed some sauteed apples in a few of them and rolled them in cinnamon sugar, but they’d also be fabulous dunked in chocolate or salted caramel sauce (swooooon).

The good news is, these Chinese donuts are so quick to make, you’ll have plenty of time left over to do your home repairs the right way. And trust me, you want to do them the right way.

These Copy Cat Asian Buffet Donuts require only three ingredients and are so easy to make!

Buffet-Style Chinese Donuts

Yield: 32
Prep Time: 10 minutes
Cook Time: 10 minutes
Additional Time: 5 minutes
Total Time: 25 minutes

Warm, sugary sweet, and fried to golden brown perfection. These Chinese Donuts are just like the ones you'll find at the Asian Buffet!

Ingredients

  • 1 can buttermilk biscuits
  • 1/2 cup sugar
  • Oil for frying

Instructions

  1. In a large heavy bottomed pot, heat a few inches of oil to 350 degrees.
  2. Remove the biscuits from the package and slice each one in fourths. Roll them into ball shapes then drop them in the hot oil. You should be able to put 5-7 of them in the pot at one time. Fry until golden on one side then flip and fry until golden on the opposite side.
  3. Remove the donuts to a paper towel lined plate. Place the sugar in a bowl and then roll the warm donuts in the sugar.
  4. Repeat with remaining dough and eat em while they're warm!

Did you make this recipe?

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Recipe slightly adapted from CopyKat Recipes

30 Comments

  1. Fried Biscuits were invented in Texas!
    Prepare as is or use a bottle cap to cut out a hole, if so fry the holes also.

  2. I First Had These In Honolulu, Hawaii At A Cart, Freshly Made , The Size Of Your Fist & Rolled In Sugar. Yummm!!!!

  3. We lived in the country years ago and I made these when the girls wanted doughnuts because it was too far to go get them in the nearest city. I have used sugar, cinnamon sugar, powdered sugar and glaze. The recipe is older than the mid 1960s though. My mother made them for us as children in the 1950s. I have always pushed a hole in the middle of the biscuit and pulled it outward. The doughnut browned nicely and was done all of the way through.

  4. I love, love, love ti scoop up the pudding on the buffet then roll out to the car ๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚๐Ÿ˜‚

  5. I like how this article is written. Your points are sound, original, fresh and interesting. This information has been made so clear there’s no way to misunderstand it. Thank you.

  6. It is crazy that such a simple recipe yields exact replicas of what you would expect from a buffet! These tasted exactly like the ones near me and are so simple to make. I used Bisquik (on the side of the box is a biscuit recipe, literally add mix with milk. I added a little flour to cut down on the stickiness of the dough) instead of a can. Rolled them into large balls at first, did a batch and realized I made them too big since they didn’t cook all the way through, and cut the other remaining balls in half, so they were the size of quarters roughly. They expand a bit in the oil. I would recommend small batches of sugar per batch of balls, since the oil clumps the sugar a bit and is harder to roll the balls in – really, this is just nitpicky stuff I’m adding.

    Thank you for submitting this recipe – my family is going to flip when I make thesw foe them!

  7. What IS this world coming to? We grew up eating these and I’m from Texas. This is the only donut we knew existed. Asian? and a whole blog to write about it. … God help us!

    1. It’s ok the World is fine. I am from Wisconsin and we used to make these camping every weekend. I believe that they are more commonly know to the world as Asian doughnuts because you can find them at the restaurant’s and on buffets all the time. Not everyone knew about them like we did before that. They are as delicious as the ones we made camping! Just breath it’s ok it’s only doughnuts!

      1. That’s awesome these were a part of your childhood! I was introduced to them at Chinese buffets, but I agree, whatever they are to you, the most important part is they’re delicious!

    1. I’m not the original poster, but I used vegetable oil if that helps! I can’t see the date on comments so if this one is old I apologize.

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